


Green

by FloreatCastellum



Series: Marauder Moments [14]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, Halloween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:14:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25171450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloreatCastellum/pseuds/FloreatCastellum
Summary: James would have considered it the height of dishonour to mistrust his friends.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Series: Marauder Moments [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1474679
Comments: 15
Kudos: 85





	Green

They had all been tired all day, which was his fault, of course, for dragging them out on a midnight adventure. He did not regret it, but thought he might come close as he put down his quill and strode across the study to his bawling son, who was writhing on the ground as though in agony, hot tears running down his face.

‘Harry,’ he said, trying very hard to be patient. ‘Harry, come on now.’

Harry merely let out another raw cry, his face shining red. ‘Bear!’ he screamed.

‘You’ve got your bear, he’s right there,’ James pointed out. Indeed, the teddy bear lay quite innocently on the ground by his son: James had repeatedly stopped writing his letter to Frank to place it physically in Harry’s arms, only for Harry to throw it across the room and then start to cry again.

James stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the tantruming child at his feet, wondering whether he should try a new tactic.

‘Dad-dy,’ gulped Harry, lifting his arms up. When James crouched to lift him, Harry began wailing for his bear again, but when James handed it to him, Harry threw it away angrily once again.

‘Oh, please learn to talk quicker,’ said James heavily, as he carried him out of the room. ‘It will be a lot easier when I can just figure out what it is you’re so passionately angry about.’

He carried his screaming, wriggling son down the stairs and through to the kitchen, where Lily was preparing dinner. She was midway through yawning herself when they entered, and finished on a wince as Harry’s piercing cries reverberated through the room.

‘He wants the bear but doesn’t want to hold it or have it anywhere near him,’ said James by way of an explanation.

‘He’s just knackered, I think,’ said Lily. ‘Maybe a nap before dinner? Or do you think he won’t go down tonight?’

‘Just a quick one would be all right, wouldn’t it? He needs it.’

So Lily continued to bustle around in the kitchen while James took his son into the living room, settled into the armchair with Harry across his lap, and waited for the cries to softly sink away into sleep. It had taken them a while to figure out, but Harry got to sleep best when he was being held. This proved to be an inconvenience at times, but James had never much minded feeling his son’s body get steadily heavier in his arms, his features relaxing and the bright green eyes slowly blinking up at him before eventually closing, his tiny chubby fist grasping his robes and eventually dropping, the little sighs and hums and the rhythmic breathing.

Sometimes James would listen to the wireless while he held him, or awkwardly try and hold a book (often he had resorted to levitating it in front of his face), but tonight he was quite content to simply look into his son’s sleeping face. He was very tired too, and found himself resting his head on the wing of the armchair as he stared down, remembering the hush of the waves from the previous night, as steady and gentle as Harry’s breathing…

And then suddenly he was blinking awake as Lily gently shook him, smiling warmly down. ‘Dinner,’ she whispered.

Harry grizzled a little as they woke him, tiny little moans and rubbing his eyes, but the nap seemed to have done the trick and he simply blinked in a confused way as James carried him through and strapped him into the high chair.

Lily handed him a tiny bowl of the softest parts of their dinner – a little scoop of mashed potato and half a sausage cut up into small pieces, along with a handful of carrots (boiled far softer than they would have tolerated for themselves) that he was sure Harry would ignore. He had taken to trying to feed himself lately, poorly, and messily, but it was fine by them because it left them free to eat their own food while it was still warm.

‘I was thinking we should get Frank and Alice and their little boy round,’ James said, pouring a liberal amount of gravy over his mash. ‘Its been a while.’

Lily hummed in approval, and nodded. ‘That’d be nice – next week?’

‘I thought maybe Thursday? Everyone else will be at the Order meeting, so no one else will be free to keep any of us company.’

He had spent a long time like this; memorizing the schedule of Order meetings he would never be able to attend, imagining them all together. Lily studied him carefully, chewing on her food, and then nodded again.

‘How are they going to get here though?’ she asked. ‘Now that our Floo’s been disconnected.’

He shrugged. ‘Apparate like everyone else.’

‘You’re not meant to do that with little babies!’

‘We have done with Harry.’

‘I know, and we shouldn’t, it’s dangerous - we’re terrible parents.’

‘Nah,’ said James easily, looking over at Harry who was kicking mashed potato off his hands. ‘You’re fine, aren’t you? You know I’m not going to splinch you, don’t you?’

Harry could not have understood what he was saying, but he knew that his father was talking to him, so he grinned excitedly at him, gravy and potato smeared around his mouth, kicking his legs excitedly.

After dinner, James fetched in the largest pumpkin from the garden, and heaved it back in to sit on the kitchen table.

‘Ooh!’ Lily said, in an impressed tone, lifting Harry and letting him beat his messy hands against the bright orange flesh. ‘Look at that! What a big pumpkin! Can we say it, Harry? Pumpkin…’

Harry tried, but the words were beyond him, and the family had an enjoyable few minutes, Lily neatly cutting out the face, James showing Harry how to scoop out the slippery, seeded insides, which made him squeal and shriek with delight, stamping his feet on the table as he leaned in, grasping for more.

Afterwards, Lily took Harry and bathed him in the kitchen sink, while James placed the pumpkin in the windowsill looking out onto the back garden, as though anybody would ever see it even if he had placed it in the front. He enchanted a small bundle of flames in the centre of it, they flickered and crackled and made it glow; he could smell the inside of it getting singed slightly. This was all Halloween would be for them, for a while. Harry would have been too small to really understand trick or treating at the moment anyway, but he wondered if it would be harder as he got older, and saw the other children through the window, and yearned to join them. It would be fine once he reached Hogwarts age, and could be at the feast. They just had to make it til then.

He wondered if Peter would be able to hold his nerve for a decade. He clearly intended to, but as James looked down into the flickering, orange glow of the pumpkin it struck him that it was an awfully long time to hold such a monumental secret. And beyond that, even, for they would still have school holidays.

It was a long time in which Peter could be tricked or accidentally slip up, or Sirius tortured and murdered and the focus redirected back to Peter. It wouldn’t be his fault, but James wasn’t sure he could last as long as Sirius could under torture.

He heard Lily’s laughter, and splashing, and he put the little roughly hewn lid back onto the pumpkin and turned to see his son sat in the sink, hitting the water with little plap plap plaps of his hands, a handful of bubbles sat delicately on his dark hair.

‘Isn’t it time someone moved up to the big boy bath?’ he asked affectionately, going to stand beside his wife and resting a hand on the small of her back.

‘No, certainly not, he’s far too cute in the sink,’ she replied, cupping water in her hand and gently pouring it over Harry. ‘Would you mind fetching him some pyjamas?’

He did so, rifling through the little chest of drawers in the nursery to find the little blue ones he liked, because they matched some of his own and he delighted in his son looking like a miniature version of himself, and brought them back to the kitchen where Lily was drying him off.

Harry was trying his best to say something, babbling excitedly, all nonsense words but with the inflections and rhythms one would expect in normal conversation.

‘I don’t think so,’ James told him seriously. ‘Bagman is tipped to take over as Captain next, my money’s on him, especially given the performance the other month. Won it for us, he did.’

Harry babble some more, his hands gesturing meaninglessly.

James tutted tilted his head in consideration. ‘Interesting viewpoint, but that would be a bit of a gamble, wouldn’t it? He’s only played two seasons, he doesn’t have the same experience as Bagman.’

Lily laughed as she pulled Harry’s arms through the little sleeves. ‘This is going to be my whole life, isnt it? Listening to you two debate Quidditch.’

‘Not if he always remembers to agree with me,’ said James brightly, and he took Harry back in his arms and carried him towards the living room.

‘Don’t get him over excited,’ Lily called after him, waving her wand over the counters to clean them. She was always neat and tidy like that. ‘It’ll be hard enough to get him to settle tonight.’

James sat with his son on the sofa by the window, letting him stand on his lap, continuing their imaginary conversation, grinning at him proudly.

‘Quah,’ Harry echoed.

‘Nearly,’ said James, in a low, excited voice. ‘Quaffle… come on, mate… qua-full…’

‘Quah!’

Though he tried for longer, Harry was soon trying to grab at the handle of James’s wand, sticking out of his pocket, making impatient little noises.

‘Mummy told me you’re not allowed to get too excited,’ James whispered to him, with a conspiring grin. Harry moaned again, bouncing his little feel on James’s thighs, and James laughed until he relented, pulled out his wand, and began Harry’s favourite game.

He tried to say the colours as he enchanted them, tried to get Harry to repeat them, but Harry’s was more preoccupied with trying to catch the little puffs of smoke, his fists grasping, stretching his arms out, and soon James was laughing and telling him he might be a Seeker at this rate, ‘but you need to go for gold, like this.’

And then Lily entered, with a slight, happy sigh, and said, ‘I’ll give him a dream feed and try and get him settled. Early night for us too, I think.’

‘Agreed,’ said James, handing Harry over. ‘I’m shattered.’

As Lily left, he rose, and stretched, yawning widely, and chucked his wand on the sofa. It was worth it, a bit of a sleepy, lazy day following a night of sneaking out and having fun. He wandered over to the mantelpiece to look at a wedding photo, one hand still rubbing the back of his neck absent mindedly, and he wondered if Sirius, Peter and Remus had gone to the pub after the meeting like they were-

Out of the corner of his eye he caught movement on the garden path, heading to the door, and somehow he knew immediately what had happened, and he wasn’t sure what he was shouting only that Lily needed to take Harry and run, because this was it, this was the end, Peter had had it tortured out of him and now all he could do was put up a fight as long as possible so she could leave-

The door burst open, James ran instinctively to the hooded figure at the door, shouting in panicked fear, he heard Lily’s terrified screams and then-

Green


End file.
